After almost 5 months of development, I can now announce that I’ve just released a new version of Kosmos. I’ve talked about it several times, although my blog posts have been reduced to practically zero – I’ve been so busy with Kosmos that I just didn’t find the time to write.

NOTE: before proceeding I should warn you that I consider this release to be in beta stage. I spent the last month killing bugs in Kosmos, but since a lot of new functionality was added there are bound to be quite a few bugs still lurking around. If/when you encounter them, please report them on the Kosmos OSM Wiki talk page.

Download

You can download the latest version from here. I’ll be also publishing the source code in the next few days.

So what’s new?

Tabbed Document Interface

First of all, the GUI interface has been completely rewritten. Kosmos GUI now uses an tabbed document interface (TDI):

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As you can see from the screenshot, the user interface is somewhat reminiscent of Visual Studio. You have a Project Explorer through which you can edit the project file. There is the Properties window which displays properties of the currently selected project or data file. There is also the Activity Logger window which shows the activity Kosmos is performing.

Of course, there is the Map window with the familiar Kosmos-rendered OSM map. You can also look for new maps using the Web Map window which is able to display most common Web maps (OSM, Google, Yahoo, Microsoft).

Downloading OSM Data

Kosmos can now download the OSM map data from the OSMXAPI server. So in theory you can now generate a map without any additional tools. Be warned though: OSMXAPI can be quite slow sometimes, especially if you choose to download large map areas.

GPX Support

Kosmos now has the ability to download GPS data from a GPS unit and display it on the map. You just need to have gpsbabel software downloaded and saved somewhere on the disk.

Relief Contours

I integrated the Srtm2Osm tool into Kosmos GUI so that users can generate relief contours for any map area:

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Imagery From Landsat And openaerialmap.org

Another nice feature in Kosmos 2.0 is the ability to download free satellite imagery from Landsat and openaerialmap.org sites:

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Tile Server

The tile server (launched from the Kosmos Console) is now able to render all of the data specified in the project file. This means that you can now render tiles which contain shaded reliefs, satellite imagery, GPX tracks, elevation contours.

Other Stuff

There are lot of other improvements which I will describe on the Kosmos OSM Wiki pages in the next days.

What’s Missing

This is not the end of Kosmos development, far from it. I still have quite a few ideas I want to introduce into Kosmos. I realize that a lot of things are still missing – I have a “to do” list that is growing day by day. Hopefully future releases will have even more cool features. So be patient… And do send me some feedback, critiques and ideas :)